Introduction to Public History - Spring 2024

 Week Nine: The Inclusive Historian's Handbook      This week, I dove into the Inclusive Historian's Handbook to uncover different blog post style entries from various historians from across the field. Topics ranged and varied from speciality, but all had important contributions to the overall understanding of Public History by discussing methodology and ethics. To me, a student reader, this week was. particularly helpful in solidifying concepts we had covered since week one. Here, I reviewed three separate articles pertaining to Public History.  Collaborative Practice:  Bill Bryans,  September 16, 2019      Collaborative Practice is a crucial and foundational base to the methodology of Public History. Bill Bryans' take on the importance of collaboration illustrates the importance of history as a key role in civic culture; Collaboration is the direct challenging of narrative on the basis of public consensus, creating a unified identity t...

 Week Eight: Preserving & Interpreting Historic Cemeteries as Public Memorials & Educational Resources           Graveyards, contrary to perceptive thought, is a central location for public history and the preservation of history on a community basis. Headstones and memorial gardens are indicators of the significants of "lives left behind," with personalization and community memory advocating for the upkeep (and in some cases, overshadowing) of those in burial sites. Greenwood Cemetery: Orlando's Heritage and Memory           In 2014, the officials from the Greenwood Cemetery sent a grant proposal to the City of Orlando on the basis of the continuation and expansion of it's memory through public history. Officials wished to create a walking tour that accompanies visitors on the grounds, illustrating the history of not only graves and those buried there, but the history of the land and how it relates to Orlando in i...

 Week Seven: What Can "The Public Historian" Teach Us About the State of the Field The Public Historian: Comprehensive Accounts of Diverse Approaches The Public Historian was created with the intention of creating a platform for the discussion and evaluation, allowing Public Historians the opportunity to showcase their projects, struggles, and tactics as they undertake research and partake in communal relationships in the effort to preserve history. Issuing a new compilation each month, the journal seeks to keep an active account of preservation and issues circulating public memory both on terms of shared authority and shared inquiry. The issues I was given specifically contain multiple instances on the issue of shared memory, specifically on the issue of combative memory and shared authority. The articles I selected are from the May and Augusts issues from 2017. Providing a synopsis of each article, I wish to understand the how each article engages in "radical public hi...

 Week Six: Beyond Preservation: Using Public History to Revitalize Inner Cities Preface: Introduction and Objectives      Originally designed as a method to revitalize inner cities, preservation and historic districts find themselves doing more harm than good to local residents. Andrew Hurley, author of  Beyond Preservation: Using Public History to Revitalize Inner Cities seeks to help readers understand how historic preservation could be better weaponized in the attempt to revive inner city areas; Inner city neighborhoods can be turned into assets when subjected to public interpretation at the grassroots level (Hurley, ix). Hurley shows his work by creating a collection of examples that deal in public archaeology, addressing each narrative from "the trenches" understanding each project as innovations in the realm of public history (Hurley, x-xi). To me, this is similar to the Hungerford School project, where local leaders want to revive the property to become a...

 Week Five: Shared Authority, Shared Inquiry, and Radical Roots (cont'd) What is "Shared Authority"?      Described by Michael Frisch in the late 1980s, a "Shared Authority" is a suggestion that "something  'is' that in the nature of oral and public history, we are not the sole interpreters. Rather, the interpretive and meaning-making process is in fact shared by definition” (Clavin, 216). Sharing Authority is not so much a technical process, but rather a personal challenge to make sense of the past through emotion and reasoning; Frisch emphasizes an connection to identity, family history, and personal experiences (Clavin, 217).      Part of Frisch's discussion on Shared Authority partially refers to the understanding of celebration vs. commemoration; Commemoration refers to a competitive history that result in identity issues, whereas celebrations are used in the glorification and memorialization of people and events (Frisch, 219). This idea...

Week Four: Denise Meringolo, Radical Roots : Public History and a Tradition of Social Justice Activism "Radical" Public History: Introductions           Radical Roots: Public History and a Tradition of Social Justice Activism is a collection of articles curated by Denise Meringolo in the pursuit to understand a new generation of Public History. More so, Meringolo wishes to understand the intersectional nature that exists with social justice and historical accounting; Meringolo argues that Public History is uniquely political, defining "radical public history" as a future focused, social justice based inclusion of records (Meringolo, 1-3). The radical nature of public history, as Meringolo argues, is critical to it's survival and is the exact reason the field has been able to adapt and evolve over the 19th, 20th, and 21st century (Meringolo, 17).            I question Meringolo's definition of "radical" public history, whe...